William Lawton (ME-1)/Quotations
Said By Will *"I want to be the kind of person the likes of Aristotle, Kongzi, Mengzi, and Diderot would have recognized as a fellow philosopher." *"I, who am self appointed protector of all that I see, have seen so much cruelty; I've seen hate in it's purest form; I have so very much. I have so very little. I am not loved, I know that. Not in body or mind. I have never known the soft whisper of endearment; never have I known the peace that lies between the thighs of woman; never have I known the reciprocation of that which my eyes hold most affectionately, but I am respected; I am feared: I am needed. And that will suffice, because it must. Because I love. I, who am not loved in return: I have a love that is far deeper than that of empty modern coupling. I will fight and die for the people I love, and those I hate, and I do hate. I have and still see cruelty and hate, but also have and still I see compassion and even love; I see everything; that is my curse, but I can do anything, and that is my gift." *"I give up; I run the risk of alienating everyone by so much as voicing my opinions, It doesn't matter what I do; it doesn't matter if I try; I always fail; Try to woo a girl: I'm either creepy; they don't see me that way or something. I try to help people, but somehow I'm too blunt, or just mean. I've tried too hard for too long.; some may disagree, but in my 'heart' I feel like I've dealt with more than enough rejection. I give up; that's really all I can say." *"I could have done so much better, if only I was smarter; So many of them were dead; tortured and dead; who knows how many of them were moved on to be sold; I didn't save them; I failed." *"I don't need a life outside the cowl. Nor do I want one. Outside the suit, I'm just another random human that no one really knows or cares about. I'm only ever me when I wear that suit, and save people in this way; my way; the only way I truly can." *"When I started this, I had liberty, but I ignored it; I had time, but I wasted it; and I had love, but I could not feel it. Many years and many lives would pass before I understood the meaning of all three. And now this understanding has passed into contentment. Liberty, time, and love: once so foreign, are the fuels that drive me forward. And love, most especially. For you, for my teams, and the people who need me; this vast and wonderful world that gave us life, and keeps us guessing. I used to dream of seeing someone worthwhile, who I recognized as myself in mirror, now I see the cowl of Knight Owl staring right back at me. My name IS Knight Owl, and I love what I do. My Odyssey ends here, in my Ithaca, with you, my Penelope." *"I don't know how long I'll live. I can still die, but from what I can tell I don't age, so if I'm careful enough who knows how long I'll live. I promise you, as long as I live, I will love you more than anyone who has ever or will ever live. I am beyond confident in this. If I live thousands of years, I will love you for thousands of years without fail. Roxanne Lilith Beaumont, will you do me the unfathomable, incommunicable honor of being my wife?" *"Owl's fly alone, as do I." *"Man will die; nations will fall; life will end, but ideas can live forever." *"I will stand right where I belong: between people like you, and everyone else." *"I never really wanted an easy life; I wanted to be strong enough to endure hardships and achieve greatness, and maintain my integrity as I did." *"I'm starting to sum myself up into two distinct personalities: the lowly soldier ant, who doesn't think and just does, never giving up, even after several thousand failures, and the cynical Frenchman who sits back, takes a puff, and says 'nothing matters,' or simply put: I'm stupid." *"If you are silent you are taken to agree; disagree? Then speak up!" *"I haven't lost anyone that I care to get back." *"That which was fuels us will kill us if it controls us. My career is no compulsion or obssession; I can, have, and will quit whenever I want; I just don't want to." *"War doesn't change; war changes us." *"I wish Freddie Mercury was still alive, so Queen could make the soundtrack to my life." *"Why do I bother? Because of compassion, and justice, and honor. Do you understand what these words mean? You should do your job, and you should do it well, simply because you can, without looking for special notice or reward." *"When I was a kid, the Batman was my hero." *"I am a lot of things; an agnostic, an atheist, which most people stopped listening there back in my hometown, but I'm more; I am an ignostic, a verificationist, an empiricist, sometimes an absurdist, and most importantly a humanist, but no one cared what I was; they cared about what I wasn't. I learned a long time ago, that I'll never be a normal person. I'll never be the person people think about and say 'I wonder how he's doing. I'll give him a call... 'I miss him' I'm the person who sat in the corner, listening to all the stupid around him; I'm the person you like when you need, but after you no longer need me: I no longer exist. I'm a specter, I know my place, and it's not around people." *"I'd rather fail trying to do the right thing, than succeed at doing the wrong thing." *"How dare you speak to me as if you know me?! How dare you pretend you could possibly quantify my life and yours? I truly try to empathize with your pain, yet you disregard mine. You want to play some game where an entire life of joy and pain can be put through numbers. I've gone my whole life with the grand majority of females thinking I'm disgusting, and that my ability to disagree with people made me the asshole, no matter what it was. I've been told that I'm not good enough, by most people, that I wasn't worth a chance, and unlike most people I seem to encounter I genuinely care about the lives of other people; I suffer as they do; Injustice ruins my very soul every single time I witness it, and I know I never be able to make go away. Put a fucking number on that... We both know pain, but you couldn't fathom my rage. I FEEL EVERYTHING!" *"There are a lot of people in the world to fuck with: I'm the one you might want to skip." *"Power isn't a toy to abuse. It's not something you hold over others. Power is a tool meant to help the powerless." *"The wide-eyed optimist, who sees the world as already great, is damn fool, blind to so many corners of the globe, but so to is the open-mouthed pessimist, who can only bring themselves to criticize every shortcoming humanity has. Cynicism is the reasonable reaction to seeing the world as it is, optimism is the choice we make to see the world and everyone in it for what they could be, rather than what they are." *"Do not misconstrue my practicality for a lack of principle." Said To Will *"You're gonna have a hard life; you're going to lose everything fighting to not lose anything." *"You can be the outcast; you can make the choice; the choice that no one else can make: the right choice." *"That's your power, your greatest gift; you can bear their pain, without breaking; it can make you stronger, if you allow yourself to feel it, embrace it; they will make you more powerful than you could ever imagine; feel pain; feel fear; feel rage, but chose to heal, to overcome, to forgive. Show the world what a superhuman looks like. I believe in Knight Owl." *"There are more people alive and free, because of what you did. Those people will tell their children, and their children's children about how a someone cared to save them; that's a lot better than what anyone else could say; You should be proud: I know I am." - Henri Ducard *"A vigilante is just a man lost in the scramble for his own gratification. He can be destroyed, or locked up. But if you make yourself more than just a man, if you devote yourself to an ideal, and if they can't stop you, then you can change the world." - al-Mualim *"I'm not the Batman anymore." - Richard Barrison *"You tried to play hero, and now it's going to blow up in your face, and destroy everything you care about." - Harvey Dent *"Rage may help you take a punch, but it can't help you throw one." *"Knight Owl isn't just a stupid fucking costume you put on, nor is it some bullshit about finding your true self or spirit animal. Much more than that: Knight Owl is a promise. A promise to anyone that when forces conspire to harm them, so too is there a force planning to protect them. It's a promise you've made by being just and vehement; by being yourself. A lot of people have died for this promise, and I wish I could say the one thing that will take their weight off your shoulders, but I can't. What I can say, is they all believed in that promise, and wanted to see you keep it. So what will be: stay here and mourn people who can't feel anything anymore, or prove to the world that they trained a person who always keeps his promise?" - Thaddeus Tucker *"Show me you feel something, I dare you! Anger, sorrow, hatred, pain, anything! Show me that your human! What have you ever been through to make you so distant from everyone!" *"Some will always believe there is good in you regardless of how many times you sway off the right path, and there will always be others, who choose to look to the times no matter how few, that you fell short, regardless of how good you try to be." *"They abandoned you! They vilified you! What could you possibly see in them? Look me in the eye and tell me they deserve it." - al-Mualim *"The only thing a man keeps with him is his character. Everything else dies eventually." - al-Mualim *"You understand the influence Joker has. Something that affects people, on an almost subconscious primal level. For most people--regular people--he inspires fear. For the less stable people--he simply inspires. But in your astute comprehension of your nemesis, you somehow failed to understand your own influence. Conversely: In your gaudy get-up you simultaneously inspire fear in even the least stable of individuals... and hope in regular people. I have long pondered how to counteract this, so I can finally force to world to know fear as I have so desperately yearned since before you were born. How can the world know fear – true dread – when there is you? A stalwart knight, ever ready to slay monsters. Fear isn’t simple biology, Knight Owl. It’s more than instinct. True fear is the absence of hope. And hope is the spread wings of a Owl, shining in the darkness." - Scarecrow *"Have you ever seen a gorilla throw a temper tanrum? Picture that level of unmitigated rage and power, but from a human a fraction of the size. All that repressed rage you think you see and then some come to the forefront, and in that moment: you'll think he hates everything." *"At first glance he would appear the weakest of us: a speedster, a super soldier who can fly and fire energy blasts, and two gods, Why on Earth would a human, who is not even at the peak of his species be one of us? Because in his weakness, he is strong; he is cunning, deceptively strong in body and will, and above all...kind and heroic in nature. It may be hard to believe, but he is the strongest of us." - Barda *"I knew al-Mualim for as long as I could remember, and I've known you almost half your life. You're not him. There are similarities, I concede, but more than a few differences too. You have a magnificent mind like he did, a deep well of repressed rage, for instance, but you don't have his heart. And for all that cold exterior, there is a light in you, an undefeatable character that believes in what we can be. I've never met anyone who cared as deeply about his fellow man as you. The old man lost that centuries before you were born: you could live thousands of years and I know you won't. You want to have a little better life than the old man's? Take care of the people who love you. Or don't. It's your choice." Said About Will *"He's basically a byronic hero; a hero who hates being one." *"I would trust him with absolute power; I think he has, as you humans call it, virtue; he lives to do the right thing, and he's one of the few I believe knows what that is." - Barda *“He’s more legend than man now. He doesn’t care about race or gender; he doesn’t care about the law or jurisdiction; he only cares about what’s right.” *"He's smart, intuitive, brutal, and he lacks any semblance of a personal life. He'd be a fantastic Black Knight, but he questions things, especially authority. He cares more about the details than the bigger picture people/preventing collateral damage. He cares, and that will prevent him from ever making a difference here at Checkmate." - Adeline Waller *"People like mister Godfrey and surely countless law enforcement officers and officials are probably wondering why some are rallying in their support for the vigilante popularly known as Knight Owl. I think the answer is simple, maybe that's why few have noticed or accepted it: People know a hero when they see one. a costumed figure openly defying the law to do things almost indubitably just; saving people no one else can, catching criminals the police even at their most militarized can't handle without leveling a city; standing up for virtues like compassion, justice, and honor. I believe there's such a fascination and confusion with people like Knight Owl, because we live in a global culture that seldom values cultivating heroism in ourselves, but we notice and admire, yet are confunded by it when it's present in others." - Vesper Fairchild Journal Entries June 14, Year TBD I'm beginning to think I should stay off the internet. Everyday I go on I find yet another person I disagree with and it always turns ugly. I forget so many people can't handle engaging with people they disagree with maturely. Worse yet, today one of the youtubers I like has made a video making a myriad of claims I disagree, and not only that: I also question the time and thought he put into these opinions he expresses. I mean after all he calls himself a skeptic, yet he threw out a lot of claims that fly in the face of evidence one could find with a simple google search of all things. Every time I tell Henri he asks me so many questions to make me think. I hate it sometimes. I do understand why he does it, and ultimately: I really appreciate he thinks highly enough of me to test me, but I don't think he understands how often I think about these things. Not just the claims, the evidence, my possible bias, etc, but every single time I always beat myself over the head with the thought "what if I'm wrong and I'm just to stupid to see it?" and even worse "Does any of this really matter at all? Eventually all life will end, and it won't matter if we maximize as many true beliefs people hold, if we do anything about the climate, or perfect whatever "really" is the best ethical theory" Being a minority on a position doesn't makes you wrong, but I worry that so few people agreeing with me, and so many people disagreeing me means I might be the one not seeing the world as it is, and profoundly delusional. Henri tries to encourage me, and he always says the same things: Either A: Most people are intellectually inferior to the few intellectuals of the world, and/or B: To be truly a free thinker, one will most likely be alone. I think both are true, but I still worry that I just might be an intellectually inferior one, so stupid no one agrees with, and even worse, that none it really matters in any substantial sense. Will's Favorite Quotes * "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." - Aristotle *"What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies." - Aristotle *"The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances." - Aristotle *"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." -Aristotle *"Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work." - Aristotle *"I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self." - Aristotle *"The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet." - Aristotle *"Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime." - Aristotle *"The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead." - Aristotle *"All men by nature desire knowledge." - Aristotle *"There is no great genius without some touch of madness." - Aristotle *"Anybody can become angry - that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way - that is not within everybody's power and is not easy." - Aristotle *"A friend to all is a friend to none." - Aristotle *"Good habits formed at youth make all the difference." - Aristotle *"We make war that we may live in peace." - Aristotle *"Dignity does not consist in possessing honors, but in deserving them." - Aristotle *"The greatest virtues are those which are most useful to other persons." - Aristotle *"All virtue is summed up in dealing justly." - Aristotle *"Most people would rather give than get affection." - Aristotle *"Character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion." - Aristotle *"Persuasion is achieved by the speaker's personal character when the speech is so spoken as to make us think him credible. We believe good men more fully and more readily than others: this is true generally whatever the question is, and absolutely true where exact certainty is impossible and opinions are divided." - Aristotle *"It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light." - Aristotle *"Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god." - Aristotle *"We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths; in feelings, not in figures on a dial. We should count time by heart throbs. He most lives who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best." - Aristotle *"The more you know, the more you know you don't know." - Aristotle *"We Can't learn without pain." - Aristotle *"Through discipline comes freedom" - Aristotle *"The complete man must work, study, and wrestle." - Aristotle *"The antidote for fifty enemies is one friend." - Aristotle *"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws." - Plato *"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something." - Plato *"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle." - Plato *"Your silence gives consent." - Plato *"We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light." - Plato *"You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation." - Plato *"One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors." - Plato *"Only the dead have seen the end of war." - Plato *"Virtue is relative to the actions and ages of each of us in all that we do." - Plato *"The most virtuous are those who content themselves with being virtuous without seeking to appear so." - Plato *"To prefer evil to good is not in human nature; and when a man is compelled to choose one of two evils, no one will choose the greater when he might have the less." - Plato *"Nothing can be more absurd than the practice that prevails in our country of men and women not following the same pursuits with all their strengths and with one mind, for thus, the state instead of being whole is reduced to half." - Plato *"Knowledge without justice ought to be called cunning rather than wisdom." - Plato *"Knowledge becomes evil if the aim be not virtuous." - Plato *"He whom love touches not walks in darkness." - Plato *"A return to first principles in a republic is sometimes caused by the simple virtues of one man. His good example has such an influence that the good men strive to imitate him, and the wicked are ashamed to lead a life so contrary to his example. " - Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli *“Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.” - Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli *"To attempt the destruction of our passions is the height of folly. What a noble aim is that of the zealot who tortures himself like a madman in order to desire nothing, love nothing, feel nothing, and who, if he succeeded, would end up a complete monster!" - Denis Diderot *"To say that man is a compound of strength and weakness, light and darkness, smallness and greatness, is not to indict him, it is to define him." - Denis Diderot *"We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter." - Denis Diderot *"The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has killed a great many philosophers." - Denis Diderot *"Every man has his dignity. I'm willing to forget mine, but at my own discretion and not when someone else tells me to." - Denis Diderot *"Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest." - Denis Diderot *"Disturbances in society are never more fearful than when those who are stirring up the trouble can use the pretext of religion to mask their true designs." - Denis Diderot *"Gaiety — a quality of ordinary men. Genius always presupposes some disorder in the machine." - Denis Diderot *"The general interest of the masses might take the place of the insight of genius if it were allowed freedom of action." - Denis Diderot *"It is said that desire is a product of the will, but the converse is in fact true: will is a product of desire." - Denis Diderot *"There are things I can't force. I must adjust. There are times when the greatest change needed is a change of my viewpoint. " - Denis Diderot *"It is very important not to mistake hemlock for parsley, but to believe or not believe in God is not important at all." - Denis Diderot *"Pithy sentences are like sharp nails which force truth upon our memory." - Denis Diderot *"Morals are in all countries the result of legislation and government; they are not African or Asian or European: they are good or bad." - Denis Diderot *"There is no moral precept that does not have something inconvenient about it." - Denis Diderot *"The possibility of divorce renders both marriage partners stricter in their observance of the duties they owe to each other. Divorces help to improve morals and to increase the population." - Denis Diderot *"Mistakes are always forgivable, if one has the courage to admit them." - Bruce Lee *"Knowledge will give you power, but character respect." - Bruce Lee *"Physical fitness is not only one of the most important keys to a healthy body, it is the basis of dynamic and creative intellectual activity." - John Fitzgerald Kennedy *"The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender, or submission." - John Fitgerald Kennedy *"You sold us out, Clark. You gave them the power that should have been ours. Just like your parents taught you. My parents taught me a different lesson... lying on this street... shaking in deep shock... dying for no reason at all. They showed me that the world only makes sense when you force it to." - Batman *"You don't develop courage by being happy in your relationships everyday. You develop it by surviving difficult times, and challenging adversity." - Epicurus *"The misfortune of the wise is better than the prosperity of the fool." - Epicurus *"Misfortune seldom intrudes upon the wise man; his greatest and highest interests are directed by reason throughout the course of life." - Epicurus *"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power." - Abraham Lincoln *"He who does not punish evil commands it to be done." - Leonardo da Vinci *"Every man is guilty of the good he did not do." - Voltaire *"Great and Good are seldom the same man." - Winston Churchill *"Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought." - Henri Bergson *"To become truly great, one has to stand with people, not above them." - Charles de Montesquieu *"There has to be evil so that good can prove its purity above it." - Buddha *"May you live your life as if the maxim of your actions were to become universal law." - Immanuel Kant *"Seek not the favor of the multitude; it is seldom got by honest and lawful means. But seek the testimony of few; and number not voices, but weigh them." - Immanuel Kant *"It's choice - not chance - that determines your destiny." - Jean Nidetch *"Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars." - Kahlil Gibran *"I have learnt silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers." - Kahil Gibran *"Wisdom ceases to be wisdom when it becomes too proud to weep, too grave to laugh, and too selfish to seek other than itself." - Kahil Gibran *"If you love someone, set them free. If they come back they're yours; if they don't they never were. " - Kahil Gibran *"Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all - the apathy of human beings." -Hellen Keller *"Be the change you want to see in the world." -Mahatma Gandhi *"If there's something wrong, those who have the ability to take action have the responsibility to take action." - Thomas Jefferson *"If there is something to pardon in everything, there is also something to condemn." - Nietzsche *"What is evil? - Whatever springs from weakness." Nietzsche *"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful." - Edward Gibbon * "I'm a Catholic whore, currently enjoying congress out of wedlock with my black Jewish boyfriend who works at a military abortion clinic. Hail Satan, and have a lovely afternoon madam." Colin Firth as Harry Hart in Kingsman: The Secret Service. *"I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be an emperor. That’s not my business. I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone - if possible - Jew, Gentile - black man - white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness - not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.... The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men - cries out for universal brotherhood - for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world - millions of despairing men, women, and little children - victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me, I say - do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed - the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish. ..... Soldiers! don’t give yourselves to brutes - men who despise you - enslave you - who regiment your lives - tell you what to do - what to think and what to feel! Who drill you - diet you - treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men - machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts! You don’t hate! Only the unloved hate - the unloved and the unnatural! Soldiers! Don’t fight for slavery! Fight for liberty! In the 17th Chapter of St Luke it is written: “the Kingdom of God is within man” - not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people have the power - the power to create machines. The power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then - in the name of democracy - let us use that power - let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world - a decent world that will give men a chance to work - that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfil that promise. They never will! Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people! Now let us fight to fulfil that promise! Let us fight to free the world - to do away with national barriers - to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness. Soldiers! in the name of democracy, let us all unite!" - Charlie Chaplin *“Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.” - Oscar Wilde *"It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness: it is life." *"Sometimes even to live is an act of courage." - Seneca the Younger *"It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness." - Seneca the Younger *"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful." - Seneca the Younger *"All cruelty springs from weakness." - Seneca the Younger *"Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power." - Seneca the Younger *"A sword never kills anybody; it is a tool in the killer's hand." - Seneca the Younger *"The bravest sight in the world is to see a great man struggling against adversity." - Seneca the Younger *"Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body." - Seneca the Younger *"It is quality rather than quantity that matters." - Seneca the Younger *"I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good." - Seneca the Younger *"The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it." - Terry Pratchett *"Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life."- Terry Pratchett *"Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know." *"In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this." - Terry Pratchett *"Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one." - Terry Pratchett *"It's not worth doing something unless you were doing something that someone, somewhere, would much rather you weren't doing." - Terry Pratchett *"Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind." - Terry Pratchett *"The pen is mightier than the sword if the sword is very short, and the pen is very sharp." - Terry Pratchett *"Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time." - Terry Pratchett *"I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it." - Terry Pratchett *"Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving." - Terry Pratchett *"I got quite annoyed after the Haiti earthquake. A baby was taken from the wreckage and people said it was a miracle. It would have been a miracle had God stopped the earthquake. More wonderful was that a load of evolved monkeys got together to save the life of a child that wasn't theirs." - Terry Pratchett *"It cannot be said often enough that science fiction as a genre is incredibly educational - and I'm speaking the written science fiction, not 'Star Trek.' Science fiction writers tend to fill their books if they're clever with little bits of interesting stuff and real stuff." *"Evolution was far more thrilling to me than the biblical account. Who would not rather be a rising ape than a falling angel? To my juvenile eyes, Darwin was proved true every day. It doesn't take much to make us flip back into monkeys again." - Terry Pratchett *"Anger is wonderful. It keeps you going. I'm angry about bankers. About the government." - Terry Pratchett *"They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance." - Terry Pratchett *"There is a rumour going around that I have found God. I think this is unlikely because I have enough difficulty finding my keys, and there is empirical evidence that they exist." - Terry Pratchett *If you are going to write, say, fantasy - stop reading fantasy. You've already read too much. Read other things; read westerns, read history, read anything that seems interesting, because if you only read fantasy and then you start to write fantasy, all you're going to do is recycle the same old stuff and move it around a bit." - Terry Pratchett *"I don't really plan. I'm almost intuitive about things." - Terry Pratchett *"No one's policing their own minds more than an author. You spend a lot of time in your own head analysing what you think about things, and a philosophy comes." - Terry Pratchett *"Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know." - Ernest Hemingway *"Courage is grace under pressure." - Ernest Hemingway *"Every man's life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another" - Ernest Hemingway *"The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places." - Ernest Hemingway *"Man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated." - Ernest Hemingway *"The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them." - Ernest Hemingway *"There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self." - Ernest Hemingway *"As you get older it is harder to have heroes, but it is sort of necessary." - Ernest Hemingway *"When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen." - Ernest Hemingway *"They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason." - Ernest Hemingway *"The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it." - Ernest Hemingway *"I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after." - Ernest Hemingway *"No weapon has ever settled a moral problem. It can impose a solution but it cannot guarantee it to be a just one." - Ernest Hemingway *"A serious writer is not to be confounded with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl." - Ernest Hemingway *"I have to admit that man’s growth toward civilization looks slow and unsteady. At moments, whole nations seem to fall back, their people fret for deliverance from selfish fears. They pay homage to persons who have snatched power for themselves, all manner of tyrants, and people beg them for comfort and for peace. But when I look beyond the weak spots, I can notice those men who pursue knowledge for the common benefit, or labor for sound structures rather than for gain, or fight and die—not for praise or possessions but for the freedom of others. These are not strange or distant to men." - George L. Stout *"You can't have virtue without sin. What I'm after is having my characters' virtues defined by how they operate in a very sinful environment. That's how you test people." - Frank Miller *"Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present." - Marcus Aurelius *"It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live." - Marcus Aurelius *"The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it." - Marcus Aurelius *"Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you." - Pericles *"What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others." - Pericles *"Time is the wisest counsellor of all." - Pericles *"Freedom is the sure possession of those alone who have the courage to defend it." - Pericles *"Having knowledge but lacking the power to express it clearly is no better than never having any ideas at all." - Pericles *"For famous men have the whole earth as their memorial." - Pericles *"Trees, though they are cut and lopped, grow up again quickly, but if men are destroyed, it is not easy to get them again." - Pericles *"First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me." Martin Niemöller *"Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does." - William James *"The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook." - William James *"Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact." - William James *"A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices." - William James *"The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it." - William James *"The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated." - William James *"If you want a quality, act as if you already had it." - William James *"It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome." - William James *"Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise." - Sigmund Freud *"We are never so defensless against suffering as when we love." - Sigmund Freud *"The ego is not master in its own house." - Sigmund Freud *"Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility." - Sigmund Freud *"America is a mistake, a giant mistake." - Sigmund Freud *"Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness." - Sigmund Freud *"What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books." - Sigmund Freud *"One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful." - Sigmund Freud *"It is discouraging how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit." - Noël Coward *"The higher the building the lower the morals." - Noël Coward *"I've sometimes thought of marrying - and then I've thought again." - Noël Coward *"Fear and courage are brothers" - unknown proverb *"There is no living thing that is not afraid when it faces danger. The true courage is in facing danger when you are afraid." - L.Frank Baum *"Passion is what drives us crazy, what makes us do extraordinary things, to discover, to challenge ourselves. Passion is and should always be the heart of courage." ― Midori Komatsu *"It takes courage ... to endure the sharp pains of self discovery rather than choose to take the dull pain of unconsciousness that would last the rest of our lives." ― Marianne Williamson *"A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer." Ralph Waldo Emerson *"Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I'll try again tomorrow." - Mary Anne Radmacher *"It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog." - Mark Twain *"Sometimes standing against evil is more important than defeating it. The greatest heroes stand because it is right to do so, not because they believe they will walk away with their lives. Such selfless courage is a victory in itself." - N.D. Wilson *"Speak your mind, even if your voice shakes." - Maggie Kuhn *"From caring comes courage." - Lao Tzu *"Anger is the prelude to courage." - Eric Hoffer * "There is no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bear witness that a man has the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer." — unknown *"Until the day of his death, no man can be sure of his courage." - Jean Anouilh *"There is love of course. And then there's life, its enemy." - Jean Anouilh *"Things are beautiful if you love them." - Jean Anouilh *"Our entire life - consists ultimately in accepting ourselves as we are." - Jean Anouilh *"Life is a wonderful thing to talk about, or to read about in history books - but it is terrible when one has to live it." - Jean Anouilh *"Inspiration is a farce that poets have invented to give themselves importance." - Jean Anouilh *"To say yes, you have to sweat and roll up your sleeves and plunge both hands into life up to the elbows. It is easy to say no, even if saying no means death." - Jean Anouilh *"The world changes in direct proportion to the number of people willing to be honest about their lives." - Armistead Maupin *"Being in love is the only transcendent experience." - Armistead Maupin *"I surrendered my youth to the people I feared when I could have been out there loving someone. Don't make that mistake yourself. Life's too damn short." - Armistead Maupin *"I haven't lost faith in human nature and I haven't decided to be less compassionate to strangers." - Armistead Maupin *"Take rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop." *"If you want to be loved, be lovable." *"Let your hook be always cast. In the pool where you least expect it, will be fish." - Ovid *"Happy are those who dare courageously to defend what they love." - Ovid *"Habits change into character." - Ovid *"Fortune and love favor the brave." - Ovid *"We are ever striving after what is forbidden, and coveting what is denied us." - Ovid *"Nothing is stronger than habit." - Ovid *"Note too that a faithful study of the liberal arts humanizes character and permits it not to be cruel." - Ovid *"If you remember me, then I don't care if everyone else forgets." - Haruki Murakami *"Death is not the opposite of life, but a part of it." - Haruki Murakami *"Everything passes. Nobody gets anything for keeps. And that's how we've got to live." - Haruki Murakami *"Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence." – Vince Lombardi Category:Created by RoninTheMasterless Category:ME-1 Category:Quotations